


The Adventure of Holy Peters

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [13]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Anesthesia, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, F/F, Guns, Illness, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Sailing, Starvation, Story: The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, Story: The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, Suicidal Thoughts, let's vary burglary with a little piracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-08 11:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14693754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: If Holmes is right about the flowers, then there is a providence out there guiding us toward each other. It is hard sometimes to credit it. There are so many stories like ours in which Holmes and I have played our part; and not all of them have happy endings.****Seek and ye shall find. This is not the end of the series, but it is the end of the separation. I am grateful to the many friends and strangers who gave me advice about some of the nautical details of this story. Your acknowledgments are in the notes.





	The Adventure of Holy Peters

**July --, 1891.**

No matter how wretched the night has been, a good shave in the early morning will set you right. There's something about the lather, the steel, the slicing away of the night's stubble--one emerges as fresh as the new day itself, ready to meet whatever it brings. The first thing I did, upon rising from my sickbed, was totter into the washroom and find the razor and the strop. Mary watched me from the doorway. I can't blame her. I don't remember exactly what I did or said when I collapsed, and my recollection of the next several weeks is a confused and vaguely terrifying blur. But from Mary's anxious vigilance during those first few days, I have made some deductions about the content of my ravings; and there is no one here to tell me whether they are erroneous.

Sunrise, then, found me on the aft deck with a large basin of warm water and my trusty shaving kit. The  _Gilded Lily_ was underway, and going well. A light mist scudded along the surface of the waves; but the sun was bright at the eastern horizon, and from its blazing circle extended lengthening streaks of rose-pink cloud and brilliant blue sky. Frank, as he  _will_ insist on being called, sat at the tiller. He had made very little impression upon me in our Baker Street sitting-room. In his shirtsleeves, with the first dawn rays streaming over him, it is easier to see how he captivated Mrs. Moulton. He is not one of your American giants; he is no taller than myself, and compact in build. With his shirt open at the neck and his sleeves rolled up, however, one's impression is of a wiry strength which I would wager has surprised its share of incautious opponents. He is a clean-shaven man himself, and observed my ablutions with some interest as the  _Gilded Lily_ sliced her path through the waves, and her shining wake unfurled behind her. 

"Just out of curiosity, Doctor," said Frank, as I packed my shaving things away in their battered old box. "Why do you shave in the open air?"

I hesitated as to whether to respond to the question or to resent the intrusion. Finally I decided that all in all, it would be salutary to have another man to converse with. 

"It's an Army habit, I suppose," I said. "I can't at home, of course. But I prefer natural light, if I can get it. I think the mirror handles it better."

That was a very imprecise and subjective way to describe an optical phenomenon; but Frank is not Holmes, and he didn't demand clarification. I crossed to the starboard railing and looked behind us the mist burning off. I was surprised to see the column of a lighthouse rising up in the distance, along with a breakwater and the gleaming semicircle of a sandy beach.

"Have we passed Margate?" I said, in some surprise. 

Frank laughed. "That's just exactly what we've done. She's a beauty, our girl; but she's a flier too. Herreshoff don't build 'em any other way. Her average speed is about sixteen knots."

"Sixteen?" I repeated, glancing at him sharply.

"That's average. Under full sail with a decent wind in good weather she can do eighteen." He smiled. "I see. You trust I believe it, but you'd like some evidence, eh?"

I returned his smile. "That's it."

"It's a beautiful day and the wind's high," he said. "Hatty's not going to be on deck again till she's sure everyone's fed; but after breakfast, well, my advice is hang onto your hat."

I was not wearing a hat; but it was good advice all the same. With some 'help' from Mary and Miss Hunter, who were thoroughly enjoying acting the _part_ of sailor even if their actual effectiveness could be called into question, the  _Gilded Lily_ was soon tearing round the southeast corner, leaving behind the chalk pillars of Botany Bay and the North Foreland lighthouse. Frank, it transpired, was of a loquacious disposition--as long as one kept to his two preferred topics, one being Hatty and the other being sailing. To be on the water in a sailing ship, he said, was the closest a man could get to heaven. As the sun climbed and the hours slipped by, I found myself coming round to his point of view. The full-bellied sails, the wind singing in the taut rigging, and the way the waves seemed to part almost lovingly before her golden prow, brought me into a new world of wind and water in which past and future alike fell away from me like the ripples of foam that curled back from her prow. The ocean takes no ink, receives no wounds, forms no scars. Every wave that greets you is new-born, though the water it's made of may have run down the sides of Mount Ararat as it rose up toward the sunshine in the last days of the Flood. It is the perfect tonic for a man who spent the previous night dreaming of nothing but dark passages and locked doors and filthy windowless rooms choked with litter and echoing with the sound of clanking chains. 

That is, it  _was,_  until we entered the Strait of Dover, and the  _Gilded Lily_ had to fight her tarnished way through the smoke and stink of the steam-boats trudging from Dover to Calais and back again. Frank handled her expertly; and though there were one or two close calls, he was not too occupied by the dangers to keep up the conversation. 

"It's progress," he said, ruefully gesturing at an enormous steam-powered ferry packed to the gunwales with holidaymakers. "You can't fight progress. Steam's faster; and wind is free, but coal's cheap and labor's dear. The sailing ship is dead; it just ain't buried yet. It's the way of the world. But all the same, I can't help regretting it."

" _You're_ sailing a ship," I pointed out.

He grinned. "Yes, but she doesn't make money, she takes it from me. Love you anyway, sweetheart!" he called up at the sails, stroking the tiller with his free hand. "There's only three reasons sailing ships are still on the water in this day and age. Number one: they're awful fun. Number two: they don't blow up near as often. Number three: they're quiet."

"That certainly makes them more pleasant than steamships," I said. "But I can't imagine being quieter makes them more profitable."

"Depends," Frank replied, piloting us nimbly out of the path of a nearby barge. "For legitimate trade, noise don't matter. If you're smuggling, noise matters quite a bit."

"I suppose it would," I said. It occurred to me that Holmes would have loved the life of a smuggler. I amused myself for a few moments in picturing it. I recalled that it would take us, even at the top speed that Frank had named, at least another sixteen hours to reach Plymouth. I reflected that there Holmes might not even be  _in_ Plymouth, and that if he was, Peters or this other Moriarty might make away with him before we arrived on the scene. By degrees, I thus descended into a funk that even our exit from the strait of Dover into the English channel could not lift. As both coastlines receded and we entered what felt, at least to me, like open water, the only consolation I could find was in imagining that a second flood had covered the earth, and drowned out humankind and its wickedness. One has to be fairly depressed to begin with to find that prospect consoling.

When Americans perceive that you are feeling 'down in the dumps,' as they say, they will give you no rest until they have cheered you up. I was plied with every delicacy imaginable at luncheon; and though I had no appetite, I ate to please them. I then had the happy thought of citing this feigned appetite as evidence that the sea air was restoring my health. By this stratagem--and I am sure that Mary and Miss Hunter saw through it immediately, though of course they gave no sign of it--I persuaded the Moultons that I should sleep on deck that night, while Mary and Miss Hunter shared our stateroom. Mary tried to thank me for this after dinner, but I would not have it. My motives are entirely selfish. I cannot face another night of lying there pretending to be asleep so that Mary can slip out to be with Miss Hunter without feeling any remorse on my account, while listening to the unmistakable sounds of a healthy and intact marriage proceeding from the _other_ stateroom.

It is fatiguing, when feeling wretched, to have to be so grateful to so many good and happy people. I spent much of the afternoon in the bow on the foredeck, feeling the absence of landmarks and wishing I were on a steam launch after all. I became, at last, so lost in thought that I failed to perceive the weakening of the sunlight, and the gathering of clouds in the distance. Hatty pointed it out to me when she came out to call me for dinner. Though I had been staring in that direction for some time, it was only at that moment that I noticed, far ahead of us, a curdling of dark clouds, and a slate-gray curtain of mist stretching from them to the churning water below.

"It's a real shame, Doctor Watson," she said. "It's just a summer storm; but they can be dangerous to small craft. It'll shift eastward, so we can go round it; but that'll take us closer to the French side than we planned on. It'll slow us down some; but as Frank always says, so would losing a mast."

I tried not to show my disappointment. Hatty patted me reassuringly on the shoulder, all the same. "Don't despair, Doctor. Mr. Holmes is a great man, and well able to take care of himself. I bet by the time we show up to that house in Plymouth he'll be on the front porch waiting for us with a tub full of lobsters and champagne on ice."

She smiled at me reassuringly. I had to call upon all my training as a gentleman and an Englishman to avoid saying or doing anything unforgivable. I reminded myself quite sternly, as I followed her aft toward the stairway to the cabin, that she did not know Holmes as I knew him, and that this was not her fault. If his clients believed him to be omniscient and invulnerable, that was because he used all his powers to create that impression. Even I, I reflected, when I doubled back on that path to the Reichenbach Falls, had been half-afraid that I would disarrange some unimaginably brilliant plan he had concocted for luring Moriarty into a trap. When I came upon them struggling on the ledge, my mind at first could not grasp the fact that Holmes was actually losing the contest and in imminent danger of losing his life. Even at the moment that my hand raised the gun and my finger pressed the trigger, my thoughts were sadly divided.  _What if this is simply another one of his stratagems?,_ my mind was still murmuring, as the bullet shattered Moriarty's temple.

Long ago, before Mary, I made some rueful remark about my brain not being my best feature, and became unreasonably offended when Holmes instantly agreed with me. I demanded, in high dudgeon, to know what Holmes in his wisdom thought my best feature  _was_ , if indeed I had one. He replied, unhesitatingly, "Instinct." He then digressed into a long discussion of Cartesian dualism, to which I fear I only began to attend when he started talking about its application to himself. "No man has ever entirely  _banished_ his passions," Holmes said. "But philosophers have dreamed of establishing an absolute and impassable gulf between them and the intellect. It was this goal to which I dedicated myself, during my two years at university: the erection of an impassable barrier between reason and feeling." I can still remember the way he put his cigarette, held negligently in two of his long thin fingers, to his lips, and inhaled the smoke deeply and gratefully. He exhaled twith a sigh of satisfaction, and then said in a desultory way, "It is an ideal that still eludes me; but one must have something to strive for. Now for you," he said, pointing the cigarette accusingly at my unfortunate head, "reasoning  _is_ feeling. And I am not sure that you are not better off."

I can see us even now, sprawled in our dressing-gowns in the sitting room at Baker Street, Holmes on the settee and myself in the armchair, in the early morning light. When I think of those early days, I can hardly refrain from kicking myself for my own stupidity. Holmes had no other close friendships, save once upon a time with Victor Trevor--the subject of another confidential sitting-room talk which in retrospect makes me wildly impatient with myself. But it was not so with me. In school, on the playing fields, at Bart's, in the army, the camaraderie and companionship of my fellow-men was as necessary to me as light and air, and I consumed it as unthinkingly. I made friends easily; some, indeed, had to be cut off when they proved in time to be unworthy of my confidence. I still enjoy my club--which is a proper club, and not a Diogenes Club. In the field hospitals in Afghanistan, I flatter myself, the men were glad to see me coming; and if my practice foundered in those first years, it is not for lack of a bedside manner. I knew what friendship was. I should have known even then that this friendship was different. To what other man would I have listened as he discoursed for hours, on whatever topic--and then felt regret when the advent of a client obliged him to stop? For what other man would I have re-entered the atmosphere of peril and mystery that had so nearly undone me in Afghanistan? For what other man, after all I had seen and done in Queen Victoria's wars, would I have picked up a revolver, ever again? And from what other man would I receive such a trenchant summing-up of my combined strengths and weaknesses with nothing but a nod of agreement, and a secret warm fluttering beneath my ribcage? Billiards with Thurston I can forgo for weeks on end with perfect equanimity; the whisking-away of little Tadpole into higher circles than I could hope to attain caused me a little pain which was soon mended; Bob Ferguson was a dear fellow but it has been years since I've given him a thought. Three months without a telegram from Holmes, and Mary would start trying to dose me with cod liver oil. And then he would appear, looking as keen and fresh and eager as ever, as if three months or six months were nothing to him. And I would reproach myself for minding.

Dinner came and went; the sun set; in the ever-more-obscure distance the coastline slipped away; an at last I have finished this entry and can roll myself up in the bedding Hatty has provided me with and sleep under the stars. If he is right about the flowers, then there is a providence out there guiding us toward each other. It is hard sometimes to credit it. There are so many stories like ours in which Holmes and I have played our part; and not all of them have happy endings.

JHW

 

**July ---, 1891.**

It was about four o'clock in the morning that the rain began.

Of course, somewhere over the channel, it had always been going on. But it was at that point that I awoke to the sensation of cold and damp rain falling upon my face. I had only just struggled out of my sodden bedding when Hatty appeared, wrapped in a rubberized raincoat and with another one on her arm. I struggled gratefully into it, but declined the enormous hat she offered. 

"Are we in the storm?" I demanded, over the crash of the agitated waves. The deck was pitching, though I was able to keep my footing. All hands were now on deck; Mary and Miss Hunter were climbing down from the foremast, having reefed the sails there. They were outfitted, too, in waterproof coats and hats, and by all appearances having themselves a very gay time. 

"We're skirting the edge of it," Hatty called back. "The edge is a little wet, that's all."

Hatty entreated me to come aft with the rest of them, but I preferred a perch on the fore starboard side, where I could watch the lightning tear at the clouds and gash the roiling darkness below with its searing, jagged bolts. By holding my hand up, visor-like, over my eyes I could keep the rain out of them and enjoy a ringside seat at this elemental contest. I began to feel as if some bearable portion of all this electricity was entering into me, spurring and quickening my exhausted heart. I thought of Lear, rending his garments in the storm and bellowing his rage and pain at the loosening clouds. And then, I saw something large, and dark, and squat, and heavy, appear inside that curtain of rain, as if it had been birthed bythe storm itself.

I stared at the dark shape that had formed in the obscurity. It was pitching and plunging like a maddened charger. For a long time it seemed to me but a vague and monstrous shadow that had somehow taken on substance. Then, a streak of lightining stabbed from the clouds to the water behind it, and I saw its silhouette as clearly as if it had been cut from paper. It was a ship, smaller than ours. It had two masts, and was flying its sails. The ragged remnants of a spinnaker, which had been torn from two of its corners, streamed behind the masthead like the tail of a comet. I thought,  _It is a ghost ship, carrying Death and Death-in-Life._  Then I thought, _This is the bloody English Channel. P_ _ull yourself together, man._

My next thought, as another streak of lightning jumped from cloud to cloud, was of my conversation with Frank the previous morning about the three reasons that sailing ships were still on the water in the age of steam. 

Hanging onto the gunwale for dear life, I struggled aft to where Hatty, Frank, and the girls were clustered round the tiller. With some difficulty I drew Frank away from the group and pointed out the dark shape on the edges of that fearful storm. He took up a telescope, and trained it upon the ship.

"In this light it's hard to say," he said. "But...when I _can_ see it...why..."

He peered through the telescope again. The rain wfalling upon us was beginning to abate. The storm was moving east, though the dark ship seemed to be drawn along with it, willy-nilly.

"That does beat all," Frank said. "Hatty, look--have you ever seen the like?"

Giving the tiller to Miss Hunter--without any of the trepidation that  _I_ felt about that--Hatty came over, received the telescope from Frank, put it to her eye, and exclaimed in wonder, "Now why would you put a thing like that on the water, when it ought to be in a museum?"

Dark as it still was, dawn was beginning to break beyond the clouds, and I think Frank could see enough about my expression to detect my irritation at being left out of their shared knowledge. "What you have there, Doctor," he said, with an enthusiast's relish, "is a good old sloop from the bad old days of the bad old smugglers. Look--she's painted black, and you see those three little holes above the waterline?"

He handed me the telescope. I trained it on the black ship, and tried to make out what he was talking about.

"That's for the oars. You get within range of the Revenue men, you furl the sails, put out the oars, and on a dark night you can row right past them. Like I told you. Quieter."

I handed Frank the telescope. I moved, with as much alacrity as I could safely muster, into the cabin, ignored the state of the stateroom, extracted my field glasses, and rushed back on deck.

Hatty, thank goodness, had resumed her seat at the tiller. Frank was still watching the mysterious smuggler's ship, and keeping up a commentary. "Course when the Coast Guard came in they made hash of old heaps like that one. I don't know where they found that relic. I don't know  _why_ they found it, or why they've got her out in the dark before dawn in a summer thunderstorm."

"Frank," I said. I began to feel a sort of chill in my viscera. "Where are we, exactly?"

"Well, not to be technical about it, we're about twenty miles northeast of Guernsey."

"And this storm is moving west to east."

"Well they all do, Doctor."

"So it's possible," I said. "It's just possible that a boat that set off from, say, Brest earlier today, bound for Plymouth--"

"Hold on now, Doctor," said Frank. "I see what you're driving at, but--"

"--might have run into the storm, and been dragged off course by it."

"Sure, it's possible," said Frank, with a shrug of his glistening rubberized shoulders. "But that doesn't mean it's what's happening. There's lots of ships on the water, though--although this one _is_ mighty peculiar--and..."

He trailed off. The pile of stormclouds, while we were speaking, had begun to diminish in size, and dawn was closer to breaking. In the dim light, I saw the black shape break out of the mist, swerve round, and point its dark prow away from us and toward the northwest.

"Can you get us closer to her?" I said.

"I sure can," Frank replied, joyfully.

He trotted aft to the tiller, whistling a brisk little air. I ran back to the prow. The rain was dissipating, and the band of sky just above the horizon was turning from grey to white. Through my field glasses, I watched the ghost ship's stern as she sailed away from us. We gained on her, slowly at first. There was no name painted on her, and no identifying markers. With the break of day, I was just able to make out some human figures on deck. None of them seemed to me to be tall enough to be Holmes; but of course he would hardly be left free to stroll about on deck. I did see one feminine silhouette--someone in a dress, at any rate, who had tied up her skirts and was busy lowering the tattered spinnaker. There were two other figures. One was a thick-set man of more than average height, who stood near the tiller, looking every now and again over his shoulder in our direction. The other was seated on the aft deck, and I could just barely sometimes see his head rising and dipping. It didn't seem to me as if it could be Holmes. But Holmes was right. Reason would have told many another man that the odds were a thousand to one against our blundering, at random, into the path of the very ship on which he was stowed. But feeling told  _my_ reason otherwise.

Bent on the boat before us, I did not notice precisely when the women began clustering round me. The first I noticed was when Hatty volunteered, "Well, they've lost their spinnaker, and one of the spars, and she's listing a bit."

"You think she's taken on water?" Miss Hunter asked.

"Maybe a bit," Hatty said. "Not enough to sink her. Still--"

"Still, what?" Mary said, a bit testily. I have noticed that Mary does not enjoy the air of amused admiration that Miss Hunter adopts around Hatty.

"A ship that's listing and lost a spar ought to be right glad to see another ship coming toward them," Hatty said. "But she's not stopping for us. No...no she's definitely running." Hatty laughed. "Trying, anyhow. I'll bet she _was_ fast--when my grand-dad was in short pants."

We were finally close enough, and it was finally light enough, for me to see that line of holes for the oars. I could see, in fact, that from one of them depended, when it was not flapping in the wind, a broad square of blue cloth, on which some figures had been daubed in white paint. A straight line, a rectangle, and a circle.

I felt my hands begin to shake. I passed the glasses to Miss Hunter, who happened to be nearest me.

"Look," I said. "At the--the oar holes. Look at the--do you see what I'm seeing?"

Miss Hunter gasped. 

"What is it?" Hatty demanded, while Mary looked anxiously on.

Miss Hunter shook her head in wonderment. Then, very matter-of-factly, she said, "Yes. That's the Society flag."

" _What?"_   Mary demanded. "What on earth can  _that_ mean?"

Miss Hunter was now clutching the field glasses. She took in a hissing, terrified breath.

"It's Carfax," she said, trembling. "It's got to be. Carfax--stowed away--somehow. She's discovered or guessed or something that we're following them, and she's signaling us."

Miss Hunter thrust the field glasses at me. I raised them and trained them on the other ship. The  _Gilded Lily_ drew closer. The third person on board had risen, and was looking in our direction. I could now, with the field glasses,  _just_ make out his features. They had perhaps once been striking, no doubt especially so when properly set off by his long, fair hair. But age, dissipation, and evil living had thickened and coarsened them, as the wind right now was roughening his grizzled mane. He turned his head to shout something at the man at the tiller. The wind caught his ragged locks and blew them back, revealing a torn and jagged left ear.

There was a kind of trembling in all my joints, as if an electric shock had just passed through me. But all I said was, "Can this ship go any faster?"

Before Hatty could answer, Mary interrupted. "John? What is it?"

"That's Holy Peters," I cried, still glued to the field glasses. "They've got Holmes on that ship. I can't see him, but he _must_ be there. We've got to catch up to them."

"But what are you going to  _do_ when we--"

"Take him off them."

" _How?"_ Mary demanded, grabbing my arm with surprising strength. She tore the glasses away from my face, and cried, "John, we cannot-- _board_ her! We are not  _pirates!"_

"And there was a time in my life when I was not a burglar," I retorted. "People change, Mary."

"Why can't we just follow the plan and go to Plymouth?" Mary said. "Can't we wait for them there?"

She was pitiably agitated, and clinging to my arm as if she wanted to wrest the field glasses from my hand. Miss Hunter expostulated with her.

"Mary, that doesn't make any sense now. They've seen us. They're suspicious, at least. If we just sail off and leave them to their own devices, there's no telling what they might--"

"This is madness!" Mary shot back. 

"You don't have to come with us," Miss Hunter snapped. "Doctor, you keep an eye out, I'll get the revolvers."

"NO!" Mary shouted, at such a pitch of anguish that Miss Hunter stopped her in her tracks. "Violet, _no!_ Three days ago you'd never been on a boat in your life, your revolver isn't even loaded, and John's not strong enough--"

"I AM strong enough!"

It came out with such force that everyone went silent. I took a deep breath, and tried to modulate my tone.

"At this moment," I said, carefully, "I  _am_ strong enough. This is _precisely_ what I am strong enough to do." 

All these days and weeks of speculation and surveillance and secrecy and waiting and at last, AT LAST, here was something that could be  _done._ I felt a new man. I felt more than mortal. I felt as if I could simply lift that damned ship out of the water and shake it upside down until Holmes fell out of it.

"John, will you please for a moment try to see  _reason?"_ Mary begged, despairingly.

"This  _is_ reasonable!" I cried.

"He's right," Miss Hunter intervened. "This mission was always looking for a needle in a haystack. We did everything it made sense to do, but there was never any guarantee we would get to him in time. You know that as well as I do. Now what we came here for is right in front of us on that ship." Miss Hunter's voice was beginning to shake. "We _must_ rescue him. _Now_."

"Seems to me it's not your decision," said Hatty, sharply. "Seems to  _me_ you're making  _very_ free with a ship that is _my_ private property, and not the common property of your little Society."

Miss Hunter turned a stricken face toward Hatty. 

Hatty's scowl broke into a broad grin. "Just kidding. I'm all in." She thumped a stunned Miss Hunter on the shoulder. "Frank!" she called out, hurrying aft. "Frank, get a rope and some planks or something, we're boarding her!"

Frank's response to this was a loud, high, whoop of excitement that I can best transcribe as "YEEEEEEE-HA!"

The ship leaned into the wind, and our pace accelerated immediately.

I scrambled down the marble staircase, found one of the Moultons' rucksacks, and began stuffing it with everything I thought I was likely to need. I strapped it on and charged back up the steps with a revolver in each hand. Mary and Miss Hunter were having a very intense discussion in the shadow of the aft deck.

"I don't understand you, Mary," Miss Hunter was saying, as Hatty hurried past her with a long plank tucked under each arm. "This isn't like you. What's wrong?"

"What's _wrong_?" Mary burst out. "You're going off to  _die_ \--"

"You don't know that," Miss Hunter replied.

"I don't want you hurt!"

"I don't want you hurt either, Mary, but--" Miss Hunter seemed to be struggling to get something out. When I heard her voice again, it was trembling on the edge of tears. "Mary, Carfax is on that ship because we sent her out on a mission _you_ asked us to undertake. I'm sorry you're frightened, and I understand it. But if it weren't for Mr. Holmes you would never have met me at all. By that time there would have been nothing left of me. The Rucastles would have _fed me to the mastiff."_  Her voice broke; she took a deep breath and started over. _"_ I _must_ go. It is the right thing to do and I _will_ do it."

Mary turned her red, tear-filled, unhappy eyes on me.

"Come with us, Mary," I said.

Mary compressed her lips, and shook her head.

"Very well," I said, offering Miss Hunter the empty revolver.

Mary actually screamed when Miss Hunter took it. She sank down onto the deck, crying. I was truly alarmed now. I had never known Mary to be hysterical. She had faced the corpse of Bartholomew Sholto without turning a hair. Miss Hunter looked at me as if she expected me to understand. An instant later, I thought I might.

I dropped to one knee on the deck. I reached out, slowly, and took her heart-shaped face in both my hands.

"I want to live," I said, very simply, looking directly into her eyes. "You understand? This is not a suicide mission. I want to live. For myself, for him, and for you. Whatever I said when I was ill, please forget it. I'm well now, and I'm stronger, and I will guard Miss Hunter's life as I would guard his, or yours, or my own. If I have anything at all to do with it, we will _all_ come back alive. Do you believe me?"

She gazed, searchingly, into my eyes. She nodded, still pale.

I helped her up. She took a few swaying steps over to Miss Hunter, who folded Mary in her arms. The  _Gilded Lily_ was going so fast that the spray was starting to splash up on deck. The black ship loomed larger ahead of us.

I heard the sound of a gunshot in the distance.

The three of us, as the saying goes, hit the deck.

"Oh my God," Miss Hunter whimpered. Mary, awkwardly, reached sideways to take her hand.

She was terrified. It's a natural reaction to one's first firefight. This was not, evidently, Frank's first firefight, for he only laughed out loud.

"Let 'em shoot," Frank called back. "They're firing _revolvers,_  at two hundred yards, ship to ship, on rough seas. If they actually hit one of us it'll only be because they were aiming for something else. Just lay low and wait for them to use up the ammunition."

I kept my head down and tried to count the gunshots; but I couldn't be certain when they were firing together, and I didn't know how much ammunition they had. A time did come, however, when the gunshots ceased. I got into a crouch; and when that provoked nothing, ventured at a crawl to the starboard gunwale. Hatty was now at the tiller, utterly unconcerned, one hand on the steering bar and the other cradling the largest revolver I had ever seen. The _Gilded Lily_ was no longer chasing Peters's ship straight on. She was trying to pull even with it. Hatty's plan was evidently to come around to Peters's ship on the windward side, literally taking the wind out of her sails.

"Frank, Hunter, you're with me," I called out. "Mary, you stay with Hatty and help defend." 

Mary, still rather pale-cheeked and miserable, nodded assent. Miss Hunter got to her feet. Mary lunged for her, seized her, and (I assume; I turned away) kissed her. Frank, stripping off his raincoat and brandishing an even larger revolver, trotted up to the starboard gunwale. From Peters's ship, we heard a confused shouting, and the clang of metal on metal. There, on the tween deck, was a woman of middle age, dressed in a tattered corset over which she had thrown an old sailor's jacket and a pair of oversized trousers, swinging an actual cutlass before her. She had evidently burst forth from the steps leading down to the hold, and knocked a revolver out of the hand of what I assumed was the Fraser woman. The captain--now visible as bald and wrinkled with age--was swinging the tiller wildly and cursing his own sails. I looked for Peters--and found him crouched on the starboard side, behind a barrel, with the barrel of his revolver in one hand.

"Look out!" Miss Hunter had seen him, and shouted, at the same instant; but too late. Peters sprang upon the lady from behind, striking her in the back of the head with his pistol. Carfax staggered forward. The cutlass dropped to the deck. Peters bent over her prone form, and swung viciously at her with head with the pistol. When she hit the boards, she stopped moving.

"Oh, Carfax," Miss Hunter muttered. "Trust you to bring a knife to a gunfight."

"Hurry, Hatty!" Mary called out. "Oh! Be quick about it!"

Hatty was. One more surge, and we were alongside them. The sails of Peters's boat flapped and sighed, dangling uselessly from their masts. The  _Gilded Lily_ swung about, and our sails slackened too. A wave pushed our hulls together, so close they almost touched. 

Frank put one boot on the gunwale. Miss Hunter, with a bit more wobble, did the same on his left. Game leg and all, I assumed the position on his right.

"Over and down on three, everyone," he said. "One...two...THREE!"

For a sickening instant I tottered on the railing, one leg in the air, looking down at the churning sea below. Then, with a bloodcurdling howl that must have stood all of Peters's hair on end, Frank leapt from the gunwale; and instinct carried me with him, right onto the deck of the smuggler's ship.

I winced at the landing; but I had no time to assess the damage. Peters was standing over Carfax's motionless form, one hand pointing the revolver straight down toward the back of her head. The captain had given the tiller up as useless and was stealing slowly backward toward a long, flat wooden locker upon which a lot of equipment had been dumped. Frank raised his gun and cleared his throat; the captain stopped moving. The Fraser woman stood with her back to the aft mast, looking at the revolver that lay in the middle of the deck. She made a dash; but in a flash, Miss Hunter snatched it up and whirled round on her. Fraser stopped dead, looking down the barrel of her own revolver. Carefully, but convincingly, Miss Hunter drew Holmes's revolver from her pocket, and pointed it at the spot where Peters's heart ought to be.

"Drop it, Peters," she said.

"Take one more step and I'll shoot her!" Peters shouted.

"Easy now," Frank said. "You just hand over your prisoner, and we can all get out of this without anyone getting hurt."

"Prisoner!" Peters blustered, gesturing down at Lady Carfax. "This-- _madwoman_ \--has been stalking me through the length and breadth of France. I'd have had the law on her if I didn't pity her condition. Now here I board a ship for England just to get away from her, and then I find she's stowed away on it. If she's what you've come for, take her and welcome.  _I_ never want to see her again."

At this, Lady Carfax let out a low groan, and began to stir. Miss Hunter glanced in her direction. Peters saw Miss Hunter's attention waver, and went for her.

The situation exploded. I heard at least one gun go off; but as nobody screamed, I assumed no one was hit. I was, myself, occupied with the bald old captain, who snatched a harpoon from the heap of equipment behind him and drove at me with it. With the deck pitching with the swells, I didn't trust myself with a warning shot. I pocketed the revolver, ducked out of his way, and drove one of my fists into his solar plexus as he passed. He must have been made of oak and leather; it didn't even slow him down. He turned and leapt at me with the harpoon. I dodged; the hook buried itself in the boards of the deck. One of his fists caught me on the rebound. The other sailed at me from the starboard side. I fell back, shaking my head, wishing I hadn't laughed when Holmes offered to teach me how to box like an Oxford man. I looked at the old reprobate's seamed and wrinkled face and read murder in it. Then I heard a cry, a spring, and suddenly there was an arm round my attacker's neck, and the business end of Holmes's revolver was clapped to his temple.

Miss Hunter had grappled him. She did it very creditably. It is true that her boots were dangling a few inches off the ground; but she did not loosen her grip for all that. She fetched him a smart kick in the back of one knee. He dropped to the boards when she fetched him another. She stood behind him, with the gun pressed to the back of his head, and growled, "On the deck, face down. DO IT."

And he did it.

I regained my footing, lifted my revolver, and surveyed the action. The Fraser woman lay gasping on the floor; but Frank was down too, and Peters towered over him, with his revolver pointed at Frank's breast. Lady Carfax was no longer splayed on the deck, but I could not see where she had got to.

"Go on," Frank taunted him. "What are you waiting for?"

Peters's hands tightened on the gun; but they did not pull the trigger. Frank laughed.

"Next time," said Frank, "keep your powder dry, and don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes. _"_

Carfax dropped--off one of the spars in the mast, I believe--right down onto Peters's bent back and shoulders. They both crashed to the deck. Frank surged up, stepped on Peters's arm, and kicked the gun out of his hand. Peters attempted to rise, and swiftly encountered the deck again, with Frank's boot planted between his shoulders. Lady Carfax strode over to where Peters's gun lay upon the boards, picked it up, and tossed it into the ocean.

"Hey!" Peters shouted, as well as he could with his cheek pressed against the boards. "That's my property!"

I took a length of rope from the rucksack and tossed it to Lady Carfax. "Restrain them," I said.

Peters let out a noise of protest. "This is an outrage! I'll have the law on you! I'm a respectable clergyman!" At this, even his confederates laughed. "You're just a--a common pirate!"

"Quite so," I said. "My friends are also dangerous ruffians. Lady Carfax, if you would."

Lady Carfax, with ill-concealed satisfaction, took up the rope and bound the hands of the Fraser woman behind her back. The Fraser woman cursed her quite fluently all the while, but did not show fight. Lady Carfax cut the rope with the Fraser woman's knife, and with the rest of it trussed Peters and the Captain in the same way.

"So where is he, Carfax?" Hunter asked her.

Lady Carfax stood up, and for the first time seemed to be upset. "That's just it. I don't know. I've been looking through the hold since we left harbor. I've been into every box and bag and barrel down there that's big enough to hold a cat, and I haven't found him. And yet they  _must_ have him, or every deduction we've made has been wrong."

"Have _who_ , you lunatic?" Peters demanded. "You're raving. I'll have you locked up--"

I pulled Peters up by his collar and threw him rather roughly backward, so that he fetched up with his back against the mast.

"Now," I said, extending my own revolver toward Peters. "Where is he?"

"I don't know who you're talking about!" Peters shouted.

"I'll ask you again. Where is Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" I barked.

Peters laughed. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes is at the bottom of the Reichenbach Falls. Everybody knows that. Where have you been  _living?_ Who in blazes  _are_ you?"

"I'm Doctor John H. Watson," I said.

Peters, for a moment, looked genuinely shocked. Then his habitual sneer returned. "You're off your crumpet."

"I'll tell you who _is_ at the bottom of the Reichenbach Falls," I said, as my finger gently caressed the trigger. "Professor James Moriarty. He had the finest criminal mind of this or any other century, and I put a _bullet_ through it to save the life of Sherlock Holmes. Since then, I have not had a moment's remorse or an ounce of regret. And everything's easier the second time. So you will tell me where you put him, or I will send you STRAIGHT TO HELL."

As I said it, I believed it. But Peters was an old confidence trickster; and he knew I was bluffing before I did. He did flinch backward; but he scowled, and said nothing. I found that I could not, in fact, fire into the face of a man who was defeated and bound, even though Holmes might at this moment be in just as much danger as he was on that path over the falls.

Keeping the gun pointed at Peters, I scanned the deck. It was a filthy old bucket, from the grimy boards to the tarry barrel over by the aft mast. The barrel was open, and there was a coil of thick rope inside it, but...? I kept looking. I glanced at the heap of nets, ropes, and rusty metal that had been jumbled together on top of the old storage locker shoved under the taffrail. Could he be somehow concealed in that heap? The collection of objects that constituted it seemed altogether random, like a bundle of objects that a murderer would take leaving the house, to make the police think he was a burglar. And the captain, before I put him out of commission, had backed up toward it--perhaps protectively.

The glint of metal caught my eye. It came, not from the heap of junk, but from the long, narrow storage locker on which it rested. It was simply a rough wooden box, made of old oak boards, now slightly warped from long exposure to the wind and waves. But at either end, it was fastened with a pair of brand new steel padlocks.

"Frank," I said. "Take my revolver. Keep everyone covered."

Frank approached me carefully, and took it. 

I ran over to the locker. I swept the top of it clear with a furious shove, and the junk cascaded to the deck. Clearing a space near the locker, I knelt down, set down my rucksack, rummaged in it, and drew out Holmes's burglary tools. I took out the jemmy and forced both padlocks. I snatched them off, tossed them behind me onto the deck, and flung the lid open.

Dear God in heaven.

I saw--or my mind told me that what I saw was--a decayed corpse, its head wrapped in rotting cerecloth. Hovering over the grimy bandages, I gasped for air. The sickly sweet smell of chloroform rushed through my nostrils and stung the back of my throat.

Every nerve I had went taut as piano wire. Instinct kicked my brain out of the way. My hands tore away the white bandages, still damp with their dose of the poison, and threw them as far from that box as my strength would send them. There it was--his poor gaunt face, still as a grave mask, clammy with sweat, and all its beautiful lines spoilt by two weeks of bristly, black, untended stubble. He was naked, save for a filthy rag wrapped round his loins. His eyes were closed, his limbs inert. The smell of neglect was overpowering. But had it been the stench of the grave itself, I would not have hesitated an instant. I did not even look for signs of life. Dead or alive, he was coming out of that hole.

"I need help!" I shouted. 

In my peripheral vision, I saw Lady Carfax crouch down at the other end of the box. "Tell me what to do, Doctor."

"Grasp him by the knees and lift in him on my signal."

She did so. It registered, for the first time, that his hands had been bound behind his back. I put my arms round his chest. 

He was warm. That was something.

I cradled the back of his head with one hand, as well as I could.

"And UP!"

It seemed to take all of my strength to do it, and Lady Carfax was struggling with her own awkward burden; but we lifted him above the box.

"And DOWN! Carfax, give me your jacket."

She threw it to me. I folded it and put it under Holmes's poor head. I peeled back one eyelid, then the other. Each of his eyes was a vacant white field with a bright blue disc in the center, in the middle of which was a tiny black pinprick of pupil. I put my ear to his heart. It was beating, too rapidly. Holding my cheek over his lips, I felt his breath upon it. His lungs were working; but weakly, and with that desperate rasping sound that we doctors call  _stertorous_ because when we can we like to avoid the word  _dying._

The old reprobate of a captain chose this moment to break his silence.

"Damn you, Peters!" he swore. " _That's_ the contraband?  _That_ trash is what I've risked my neck and my boat for? You bloody swine! For this worthless heap of--"

"Hunter!" I shouted. "Shut him up! I don't care how you do it!"

I don't know how she did it; but he shut up. I went back to the rucksack and dragged out a long, narrow metal canister with a kind of spigot on top.

"Frank!" I called out. "Is there any trick to this?"

"No, Doctor Watson," he said. He saw at once that I had commandeered one of the oxygen tanks from their diving equipment. "The tube goes on the spigot and the mask on the tube. Fit it over the nose and mouth and turn the knob to the first tickmark."

My hands were steady, but my viscera were churning. Knowing Peters's methods, I had made a special study, during my long days of enforced inactivity, of the treatment methods for chloroform overdose. It is an unfortunate characteristic of my profession that we are quite ready to use a drug medicinally long before we have any idea of how to counteract its negative effects. Of the methods my illustrious colleagues had tried in their desperation, oxygen seemed like one of the more sensible. But I was only a general practitioner of indifferent skill and limited knowledge. What did I know?

Instinct gave my brain another smart kick. I affixed tube and mask, tied the mask on over Holmes's nose and mouth, and turned the knob. I grasped Holmes's shoulder and pulled him onto his side.

"Carfax, get his hands free."

She went round behind him.

Holmes was taking breaths. The oxygen was getting into his lungs. That was all I could be certain of. All other sounds, all other motions, even the rise and fall of ocean and the deck beneath me, disappeared.

"These knots are impossible, Doctor Watson," Lady Carfax said. "I'm going to have to cut through it."

"Do it," I said.

She fetched her cutlass and went to work. I held Holmes on his side, and I watched him breathe. I measured each breath against the last--how rough it was, how deep his diaphragm dipped, how much his chest expanded. I  _thought_ I saw and heard it changing. I could not be certain.

"Hah!" Lady Carfax cried. The rope binding his hands broke. Lady Carfax, without being told, helped me gently roll him onto his back. His arms now lay limp at his sides. There were raw, red bands around each wrist where the rope had rubbed the skin away. Under his fingernails I could see dirt, and tiny grains of wood.

My guts heaved. I stopped looking at his hands, and watched him breathe.

I had with me a syringe loaded with a solution made of .0001 drams of prussic acid dissolved in saline. Some article in the Lancet had claimed to achieve results with this treatment. Prussic acid is, however, a virulent poison deadly even in small doses. No matter how I diluted it, I could not be entirely sure that it wouldn't kill him. Neither could I be entirely sure that my hesitation to use it would not prove fatal.

Holmes's eyelids fluttered, then closed.

I laid my ear against his breast, keeping out of the way of the oxygen tube. The beat seemed to me fractionally slower and stronger; but how did I know that I was not imagining it?

I closed my eyes for a moment, the better to listen to his heart. Holmes's chest rose. He drew in a long breath. His chest sank, slowly. A low, inarticulate sound came from between his lips. 

I felt his left hand take me by the hair.

I lifted my head to look into Holmes's face. His eyes were open. The pupils were still too small, but they had expression--an expression, to be precise, of sheer panic. His right hand tugged, convulsively, at the mask. I undid the strings and removed it. I put both of my hands round the back of his head. I hovered over him, inches away from his face, while his left hand clenched around the locks of my hair that it had rather painfully seized.

"Holmes," I said. "I'm here. I'm here. It's all right."

His pupils dilated slightly. He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. His lips worked. He tried to say my name. The air came out, but without sound.

"Lady Carfax, there's a canteen in my rucksack, will you--"

"Here," she said, brandishing it at me. 

I set Holmes's head down on the jacket, gently. His grip on me did not loosen at all. I uncorked the canteen, put one arm around Holmes to lift him, and put it to his lips. His throat worked. The dark stubble reached almost to his Adam's apple, and the pallid skin beneath was mottled with dirt and stippled with little red points of inflammation.

Holmes drained the whole canteen. I tossed it aside. He gripped my head in both hands, holding me there above him, staring with his electric blue, almost pupil-less eyes into my own.

"Watson."

His voice was a weak and rusty croak; but it brought tears to my eyes. He saw; and it gave him a moment of peace. He released me, and closed his eyes, and let out a long breath. I sat back on my heels, laying one hand lightly against his breast, so he could feel my touch.

With his eyes still closed, Holmes groped for my hand, and seized it with both of his. His eyes opened.

Everything changed. Somewhere inside that wonderful brain, a barrier had been torn down, a gap closed, a connection completed. In his open eyes I really saw, for the first time, that indomitable spirit, fighting its way toward me through the lingering fog.

"You're not a spirit," he gasped. "It is really you."

I could not speak. I nodded, and pressed his poor hands tighter. 

"Oh Watson," he cried, with a rush of tears. His hands broke from my grasp. He pushed himself, shakily, into a sitting position. I reached forward to help him. He threw his arms around me and fell on my neck, weeping. As I threw my arms round him, I felt one of the scars on his back. 

I cannot describe the sound I made. It must have been startling, for over Holmes's shoulder I saw Lady Carfax put her hands up to her mouth, as her eyes widened in alarm. All I know is that this--release--was immedately followed by a flood of tears, by racking sobs, and by my clutching Holmes to my breast, far more tightly than one should clutch a patient who has so recently been in respiratory distress. He pressed his lips to my ear, and murmured something which I could not make out, but which he has since told me was the French for heaven.

"Oh for Christ's sake," cried Peters, in tones of utter disgust.

Frank fetched him a blow on the head that knocked him sideways. As Frank stood up afterward, something in the distance seemed to catch his attention.

"I know it's not a convenient moment," Frank said, gazing off to starboard. "But there's a ship on the horizon, Doctor, and I  _think_ she's Coast Guard."

I held on tighter. "They can't find him here," I shot back, over Holmes's shoulder. "He can't come back to life till we're ready to fight them."

"Fight who exactly?" Frank inquired. 

"Moran! Moriarty! The ruddy government! All of them!" I shouted. "We will take _all of them_ on, singly or together, but we've got to get him well first. No, Holmes," I said, as I felt Holmes draw breath to argue. "No,  _not now._ Now you hide and now you rest." 

"Yes, _Doctor_ ," Holmes said. I was glad for the concession, and even gladder for the insolent tone in which he made it. 

"But what do we do about--?" Miss Hunter said, gesturing toward the horizon.

Lady Carfax leapt into action.

"You get back to your ship and get away from here as fast as you can. Take all the revolvers, and the flag, and everything that was in that rucksack. I'll handle this." 

She tossed her cutlass onto the deck, closed the storage locker, and headed toward the entrance to the hold.

"Handle it how?" Frank demanded. 

Carfax gestured at the trio of renegades who lay bound and furious on deck. "I'll do what Doctor Watson does," she shouted back. "I'll tell them a story they'll like better than the truth."

She disappeared into the hold. Frank looked at Peters, who regarded him with sullen and wary silence. Frank called down the hatchway after her. "But what if they tell them what really--"

Lady Carfax emerged from the hold with a dress and petticoats in one hand and shoes in the other. She took off her boots, stripped off the trousers,  and began struggling into the petticoats.

"Oh, my gallant American cousin," she said, as she pulled them up. "Let me explain. I am the Lady Frances Carfax. Before I disappeared without trace from a watering-hole in Lausanne, I was last seen in the company of Peters and his familiar. My relatives have been searching for me frantically, without success. But after weeks of captivity, I was finally smuggled on board this boat--along with the trunk containing all of my clothes as well as--concealed inside them from the eyes of those who might demand a share of the booty--my dear mother's jewelry--"

"You double-dyed traitor!" the captain roared out.

"Oh, bugger yourself sideways!" Peters shouted back at him.

"Devil take both of your leathery hides," the Fraser woman put in.

"--where by great good fortune I managed to escape from this locker and subdue my assailants," Lady Carfax finished, pulling on the dress and reaching behind her to do up the buttons. "So say I. And they say...what? That a gang of pirates boarded them to rescue a dead man?" She drew on her shoes, tied her laces, and stood up, hands on hips. "Sir, we are in English waters now, and I am a lady. You may safely leave this to me."

I decided that we could. I disentangled myself, reluctantly, from Holmes, shoved everything back into my rucksack, slung it on, and helped Holmes to his feet. The bravado that had come back to his eyes and his voice had not infused his limbs. He took one overly confident stride forward; his standing leg buckled, and he nearly went over. Taking care to avoid the welts round his wrist, I draped his arm round my shoulders and put mine arm round his waist. In this fashion, I managed to guide us, precariously, across the gently heaving deck toward the gunwale. Mary and Hatty had placed two broad planks across the gunwales of the two ships, and lashed them tight to the  _Gilded Lily._  It was a sort of a bridge, though not one that inspired confidence. Miss Hunter leapt up on the planks, trotted nimbly up the incline, and leapt lightly into the  _Gilded Lily._ Holmes's eyes followed her, in some astonishment. I felt his arm go rigid, and his body tense.

Of course. He'd seen Mary. And now he was afraid.

Mary looked up from her work. She saw Holmes staring at her. She opened her mouth, searched for words, made an interrupted helpless gesture, and then finally took a leaf out of Holmes's book. Turning to Miss Hunter, who stood by her side, Mary drew her into an unmistakably intimate embrace, which Miss Hunter returned with unmistakable enthusiasm. Hatty dropped the hawser-end she was handling and let her arms fall to her sides, her mouth slightly open.

"Ah," Holmes murmured softly. "I should have expected it."

"Well, you didn't," I replied. "Now hold on to me, we'll get you over." 

It was easier said than done; but with me and Frank holding him up on our end, and Miss Hunter, Mary, and Hatty handling him on the other end, we managed to get him up the planks and into the ship. I piloted him over toward the aft deck and propped him up against the wall. I knelt before him, studying his face as if it might at any moment be snatched from me. As if from a very long distance away, I heard Frank vault over the gunwale, heard the planks retracted and the ropes untied, heard the sails creak in the wind again as the _Gilded Lily_ got underway.

Holmes reached for me again. His hands were shaking, and not with emotion. He drew my head towards his. His mouth tasted faintly of blood. When I drew back, I could smell something sweet on his breath, as if he had been eating overripe fruit.

He had not been eating overripe fruit. That was obvious. His face was drawn, his jawline sharp and fragile, his ribs standing out more prominently than ever. I put my hand over his heart. Even from that much exertion, Holmes's heartbeat was dangerously elevated. 

"Holmes," I said, sadly. "When was the last time you ate?"

He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall as he tried to remember.

"I nearly escaped in Dijon," he rasped. "After that they stopped feeding me."

I felt my blood boil and my heart sink. I tried to keep my voice level.

"And how many days since Dijon?"

His eyes opened. I saw him searching his recollection. I saw him, with terror, not finding an answer.

"I..." he murmured. "I...think perhaps..." Tears came to his eyes. "I don't know. I'm sorry, Watson, I don't know. I lost track of time."

He was immeasurably distressed by this admission. I took his face in both hands.

"It's all right," I murmured. "Don't upset yourself. It's of no real consequence."

He closed his eyes and laid back against the wall. I took his hand in mine and pressed it. He pressed back. That seemed to be all, for the moment, that he had the strength to do.

Looking around anxiously, I saw Mary hovering by the starboard gunwale.

"Mary," I said. "Could you ask whichever of the Moultons isn't steering right now to come aft, please?"

She nodded, and disappeared.

"Moulton," Holmes murmured, his eyes still closed.

"Yes, Holmes."

"Mr. Francis Hay Moulton," he breathed.

"Yes, Holmes."

"The Lord Saint-Simon case."

"Exactly, Holmes."

His head drooped a little, and he nodded off. I took my medical bag out of the rucksack and began disinfecting the wounds around his wrists.

Mr. Francis Hay Moulton, in fact, soon arrived, looking a bit less like a buccaneer than he had a few minutes earlier. He squatted down near me and took a close look at Holmes.

"Is Mr. Holmes going to be all right?" Frank said, genuinely concerned.

"I hope so," I replied. It was unsettling to feel how shocked he was by Holmes's appearance. Frank had never seen Holmes outside of his own element--that is to say, the sitting room at 221b. To see him now--pallid, rail-thin, unkempt, dirty, stinking, his wrists ringed with welts, unable at this moment to hold a conversation or even keep his eyes open--must be like seeing the Queen, in the midst of a state dinner, suddenly lean over the table and vomit. "He's dehydrated and he's been kept from food for, I should estimate, at least five days. He wants feeding, but we must do it carefully. That orange juice you served at breakfast--is there any left?"

"I can make more," he said. "Anything else?"

"A clean blanket, and...would you have such a thing as condensed milk?"

Frank gave out a hearty laugh. "Do we have condensed milk!" he exclaimed. "Just you wait."

He hurried away. I bandaged Holmes's wrists. As I waited, holding Holmes's hand and watching him breathe, a snatch of conversation drifted from the tiller over the aft deck toward me.

"But why didn't you  _tell_ us, Mary?" Hatty asked. "All that rigamarole about the staterooms--I knew  _something_ was up, but--"

"I...I suppose I was afraid you'd...well, it's complicated," Mary stammered. 

Hatty sighed. "Oh, sweetheart. If my last name were Cabot or Bean, that'd be one thing; but it isn't. I grew up in a mining camp. Where do you think prospectors come to the West _from_? It ain't Harvard."

Mary laughed. It felt good to hear her laugh. Even with all the anxiety still roiling me, while I was holding Holmes's hand, I was simply, honestly, blessedly happy for her.

I heard a clatter on the deck behind me. Frank had dumped a dozen tins of condensed milk there. The noise startled Holmes awake. He convulsvely pressed my hand. His eyes found mine. He reassured himself of my presence, then turned his attention to Frank.

"Mr. Moulton," he said. "I can't thank you enough for your kindness."

"Better not try then," said Frank, genially, as he tossed me the blanket. He set down a glass pitcher filled with orange juice, and a small tumbler. "You just get better, that'll be all the thanks me and Hatty need."

Frank disappeared. I threw the blanket over Holmes. He clutched it to him, under his chin. I poured him a glass of orange juice, and began feeding it to him, in sips. He did not protest or struggle at all, but meekly swallowed it down. I found that in itself alarming. If even he knew he needed nursing, he must have felt very weak indeed.

"Watson," he said, as I reached for the first tin of condensed milk.

"Yes, Holmes?" 

I got the lid off and turned back toward him. He grasped my wrist, quite firmly, and fixed me with an unexpectedly intense gaze. 

"From now on," he said, very solemnly, "I will tell you everything."

I set the condensed milk down. I kissed him again. Neither of us wanted to stop. Neither of us wanted to let go.

I was the one, finally, who drew back. I settled his head, very gently, against the back wall. With my fingers, I combed--as well as I could--his long, matted hair. I traced the line of his jaw, stubble and all, with my hand. His blue eyes filled, again, with tears, as some sharp and painful thought came suddenly to him.

"Oh my poor Watson," he said, bringing his hand up to cover my own. "You've been ill."

I felt I had already cried as much that morning as a man is generally allowed; but the tears came back. He was so shocked and pained by his own deduction; and yet he was also relieved to have made it.

"Yes," I said, rather pathetically. "Yes. I have been...oh Holmes. It has all been so terrible."

I curled up against him. He folded his arms round me. I breathed in the smell of the blanket. I cried, with abandon, for a long time.

"Listen to me," Holmes murmured, finally, pressing his lips against the top of my head. "Whatever happens now, we stay together. In spite of the criminals and in spite of the law. From this day forward, all that parts us is death. And perhaps even that will be only temporary. The two of us,  _contra mundum_. All right, Watson?"

"All right, Holmes," I echoed, holding him tighter.

From over by the tiller, I heard Mary's voice. "Where are we headed now, Hatty?"

"North by northwest," she said.

"Why?" Mary answered.

"Well," Miss Hunter replied. "Mr. Holmes needs a place to convalesce. Somewhere remote, far away from Plymouth, surrounded by miles of rugged country where you can see anyone coming for miles. And  _I_ happen, at this moment, to be carrying around in my brain a list of every vacant summer home on the southern coast of Cornwall."

Holmes's chest shook slightly, as he gave out a soft little laugh.

"A quite exceptional woman, Miss Hunter."

"Yes," I said. I drew back, with some reluctance, and readied the condensed milk.

He took a long sip. His eyes seemed, to me, to be brightening a bit, though he still looked pitifully small and fragile beneath that blanket.

He cast a glance heavenward, and sighed.

"Lord, what fools we mortals be."

With an almost comical expression of pained resignation, he returned to the condensed milk. I looked up at the sails spread above us. The day was still cloudy; but there was a bright patch where the sun was trying to burn through. Holmes looked, if possible, even less healthy in the sunlight. I thought of all the evil-minded men around us, spinning their dirty little webs. I thought: _Let them work_. When his strength is restored, he will tear himself free, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Lady Carfax will take the good news back to the Society. Even Holmes will not begrudge them the celebratory sherry round the common-room fire that always follows a job well done. Peters will finally have his comeuppance. And for the moment, with all its sails spread, sparkling with sea-spray, scattering its crystal drops onto the swelling breast of the azure waves, our ship of fools sails on.

JHW

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank tumblerinos @bonthropshelmerdine, @airbuilder7, @nerdsorrow, @paxpinnae, @artemisastarte, @tonkshamsandwich, and @buddhaoffice for all their advice about smuggling, sailing ships, and how to board a boat like a pirate, without which this story could not have been written. Thank you for selflessly sharing your expertise for free like we do in fandom!


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